“Excellent, Miss Street, but there is one more boon I would ask.”
Yeah, he talked that way, tongue-in-dead white cheek, naturally.
“Certainly, Godfrey.” I can put on the Ritz too.
“I’d like to assist Nicky and you in person. Could you ask Mr. Nightwine for ‘roaming’ rights on me? I won’t be any trouble, I assure you.”
I raised my eyebrows. I knew more about CinSims than most, but “roaming” rights was a new one.
“THERE IS NO SUCH thing as ‘roaming rights,’ Hector told me when I was standing before his massive desk in the estate’s main house.
For square footage inside and out, the place rivaled Wayne Newton’s just down Sunset Road. There were even four life-size bronze rearing horses at the front wall like Wayne’s, only Hector’s depicted the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Hector was bigger than Wayne, though, a man of size who dressed like Citizen Kane at home in Hearst Castle. He was also as high-handed as Orson Welles’ fictional film mogul.
“Is what Godfrey asks possible?” I wondered.
Nightwine’s rosebud-pink lips pouted in his fleshy face. “If anyone could do it I could.”
“I’d hoped so.”
“But why would I?”
“Godfrey would like to assist on my first case.”
“Well, well, well. Your first case in your new office, you mean? Who is it?”
“Tourists,” I said with gusto. “I’m to meet them at the Inferno Bar.”
Nightwine curled his agile lips. They were the smallest thing he could move. “I don’t see the need for Godfrey’s participation. A loose CinSim would cause comment.”
“Not if he was ‘assigned’ to me.”
Nightwine’s bushy brows beetled, making a fierce U above his eyes. “I can give you an ‘excuse’ for his mobile presence to show authorities, if necessary.”
“You’ll okay it?” I made the mistake of sounding jubilant. Nightwine was the contrary sort.
“Only if he wears a boutonnière sound camera.”
Hector Nightwine combined a genuine love of classic films with the hungry heart of a voyeur.
“It’s up to Godfrey,” I said.
Nightwine tsked. “Those nuns prattled on about Free Will far too much at that Midwestern high school of yours.”
I smiled and kept quiet, knowing that nothing was free in Vegas.
THE INFERNO BAR WAS jumping that evening when Godfrey and I arrived.
Since the place was always full of CinSymbiants—fans who wear black-and-white costumes and makeup to emulate their favorite Silver Screen stars—Godfrey blended right in.
My Black Irish coloring of pale skin and black hair could almost pass as CinSim, but my blue eyes blew it. I didn’t want to scare my out-of-town clients-to-be, so I wore a lilac-colored Capri set.
And when I say the bar was jumping, I refer to the tiny salamanders and fire demons cavorting along its entire expanse, which was all glass, like Snow White’s coffin.
“Ah, the de-lovely Miss Delilah,” Nick Charles in evening dress hailed me. “Hullo, old chap,” he greeted Godfrey. “I see foxy old Hector gave you ‘walking’ papers. You could have changed into something less twinlike.”
“These are my working clothes, too,” Godfrey replied. “You don’t own the urbane thirties playboy look, you know.”
A young CinSymb woman attired like the ghoulishly girlish hag Bette Davis played in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane stopped to compliment Godfrey on his “radically right-on costume” as Nick Charles and took our photos.
Godfrey frowned at her clownish makeup as she moved on.
“Not from the classic horror film period of the thirties,” Nick explained to Godfrey. “That nineteen sixty-two film was the last gasp of black-and-white. I see these cheesy imitations here all the time. You’ve led a sheltered life on the Nightwine estate, brother.”
I decided we needed to out of the public eye. The Inferno’s small mirrored floating security balls were clustering above us. Nicky’s job was to chat up tourists and CinSymbs, not me and Godfrey.
“The potential clients are down the bar,” Nicky told me. “I gave the woman an Albino Vampire and the men Brimstone Kisses and said you were the inventor. I must say they’re a quarrelsome lot, but your cocktails quieted them right down. I must return to circulation.”
Oh, great. Sloshed clients. I suspect post-Millennium Revelation Vegas was a bit much for first-time visitors. Sometimes it was a bit much for me and I’d lived here for months.
A perfectly normal-looking bunch of folks circled their wagons and their drinks at the bar’s far end. Thanks to Nick’s cocktail place markers, I knew three men and a woman were my clients. Not good. A private investigator doesn’t need a paranormal talent to know that no one can serve many masters.
I introduced myself and then had a stroke of genius to explain Godfrey’s presence. “And you’ve met Nick Charles, of course, the famous Manhattan private detective.”
The five eyed Godfrey suspiciously.
“I thought he was the bartender.” the stocky older man said. His rapidly eroding hairline had been shaved so close it became a discreet shadow of its brunet self.
“Silly you, Ronnie,” the young woman scolded. “He was just playing ‘host’ while we awaited Miss Street.” She was a trim but tightly wired redhead, and stood to shake my hand. “I’m Christa Robertson. I must say I’m impressed with the caliber of your cocktails and your assistant. Since our problem is with one of Mr. Charles’s...um, ilk, he may be actually useful.”
“I endeavor to be useless at all times, Miss,” Godfrey quipped, attempting to kiss her hand a bit tipsily.
She jerked it away.
“I fear I am doomed to disappoint you,” he said.
“Such false modesty.” She turned to the two auburn-haired young men. “Let’s hit the suite before the introductions go any farther. You never know who, or what, is listening in these places.”
Godfrey winked at me as we followed the group, everyone clutching their unfinished drinks, to the elevators.
Godfrey winked! He was far too dignified to wink, so I knew he was embracing the persona of his “cousin.” Two Nick Charles. This couldn’t be good.
UPSTAIRS, I DECLINED ROOM service drinks, saying we had to work sober.
Actually, I said that.
One brother hadn’t touched his Brimstone Kiss. I watched him offer it to “Nicky”, who accepted it readily as the group settled on the couch around the cocktail table.
We took the facing chairs and soon discovered we faced the Family Robertson.
The auburn-haired brothers were Steve and Michael, both in their late thirties. Full-out redhead Christa didn’t volunteer her age, but she looked about thirty-three. The older man was sixty-something Ronald Adkins.
“Do you investigate paranormal matters, or are you an investigator with paranormal powers, Miss Street?” Christa began.
The jury is out on the latter, so I said, “Anything involving celebrity zombies like CinSims is considered paranormal. That’s why Nicky called me in.”
“This ‘CinSim’ angle is too bizarre for me to tangle with,” Christa said. “My family only needs an intervention.”
“I’m an investigator. I don’t do interventions. That implies coercion. I don’t coerce or commit coercion.”
“A pity,” Michael noted, eyeing my ankles.
My cocktails contained enough 100-proof pepper vodka to work as truth serum, it occurred to me.
“Grow up, Mike,” said teetotaler Steven. “This trip is a waste of time. Mom will do what she likes with her money, and with that resurrected gigolo. We don’t need another addict on our hands.”
Oh, great. I didn’t need an inkling of paranormal talent to see these folks needed a therapist, not an investigator. I was about say so when Godfrey laid a cautioning hand on my forearm.
CinSims rarely touch people. It’s not that they aren’t as solid as you and me, or
that any taint of decaying corpse lingers. The Immortality Mob consists of geeks as well as gangsters. They know body odor is a prime no-no to the rest of us.
No, most CinSims just don’t need literal human connection, I think. Lucky stiffs. That need can send us, the living, in a lot of wrong directions. The Family Robertson was right that their matriarch had found an odd partner. And evidently....
“Mrs. Robertson, the mother to you three,” I verified, “is the object of your concern and my employment?”
“Yeah,” Adkins said, “and I’m her fiancé, the guy who’s been aced out by a corpse. I’m not too sure about interfering. April does seem to have gone off her rocker, though. I’m still perfectly willing to marry her. I’m comfortably off, in reasonable health, have a paid-off house in a good part of Winnetka. What more could a woman want?”
“The Vegas gigolo,” Christa said.
“It’s not your money we’re all worried about, Ronnie,” Mike added, draining his Brimstone Kiss to the fiery cinnamon schnapps in the bottom. “The old lady is the one with the big dough and she wants more than you’ve got, like something else big.”
“We can get her away from this CinSim guy before she marries him or signs anything over to him,” Christa announced between gritted teeth. She glared at me. “You can dig something damaging up on this lowlife, can’t you? He’s been here since the Millennium Revelation, screwing women all the while, and screwing them out of their money, I’m sure.”
“I’m not convinced bad news about Mr. Wonderful would be enough at this point,” I said. “Where did Mrs. Robertson meet him in Vegas? Any clue to his background? Other than the handyman stuff? What’s his name?”
Christa gave a huge sigh. Her exasperated breath uplifted her bangs as she rolled her eyes like a much-tried teenager.
“Cary Grant.”
“CARY GRANT? I REPEATED. “You do know who he is?”
“I know what he is,” Christa answered with a nose wrinkle. “Some raised dead guy who’s been imprinted with the image of a black-and-white film star. Who knows where the underlying corpse has been? Eeew. It’s bad enough she paid half a mil for him. How mother could consider marrying a combination of ick and double-ick is beyond me, beyond us all.”
“Celebrity zombies are usually leased entities,” I said. “If she bought the CinSim for a specified time, your mother can fulfill her fantasy of ‘marrying’ Cary Grant, who was the screen’s dreamiest romantic leading man for four decades, but only if she signs up to reside in a virtual community where humans and CinSims can cohabit.”
“She mentioned,” Michael put in glumly, “buying a ‘honeymoon cottage’ at Sunset Boulevard Estates. The old dame has really lost it.”
“She will if she stays there,” Steve said. “Residency alone costs half a mil a year, and some longevity effect goes along with the deal. So it could be decades before her money runs out.”
Michael whistled his surprise. “There goes our kids’ college funds.”
“Not to mention our entire inheritance.” Christa shuddered. “For what? Senile kisses with a zombie in pancake makeup?” Her narrow shoulders shuddered. “We can’t let a freaking corpse delude our mother into throwing away the family fortune.”
Godfrey spoke up as Nick Charles. “Humans are all walking corpses in a sense. Only CinSims are immortal.”
“God! We can’t even off the sucker,” Mike said.
I did do an intervention at that point. I intervened before Godfrey took that personally and got physical. The idea of a berserk butler was as off-putting to me as a fornicating CinSim was to the Robertson siblings.
“It’s actually the corporation, not a corpse,” I explained, “that will get your mother’s money. I’m afraid you can’t challenge that as long as your mother is alive and in her right mind.”
“She can’t be sane,” Christa said firmly, “or she’d have never gone to the Star Bar and dug up a dead movie star for our stepfather. I guess we’d better prepare ourselves to meet our ghoul-in-law to be. If she was so hot for an old guy, Ronnie here is the perfect candidate.”
I begged to differ. Also, celebrity zombies are quite a different supernatural than ghouls, but I didn’t waste my breath. Let her meet Cary.
THEY SAY A PICTURE is worth a thousand words, so I had them pile into my ’56 black Cadillac convertible, Dolly. Her flagrant red leather upholstery hosted the three siblings in back with Godfrey as a guide while Ronnie rode up front with me. Vintage Caddies are so big each bench seat makes a fine and private confessional.
While the young folks oohed at the Vegas Strip’s overwrought sound, light, and water-and fire-work shows, I teased facts out of April’s jilted late-life boyfriend.
“Your first visit to Vegas?” I asked Ronnie.
“Since the hullabaloo,” he said, referring to the Millennium Revelation. “Still looks like Sin City to me.”
“Still offers all the usual vices, only the stakes have been upped. You could lose your virtue, your money and your life here, plus your soul, if you believe you have one.”
Ronnie chuckled. “My soul’s a bit run-down at the heels. Not worth much.”
“What’s your game?”
“I was a financial manager before the Crash of ’08. We’re all pretty frowned on now. I was near retirement anyway. I can see why April might go off the tracks for some young guy. I play golf, like the occasional cruise, do Viagra once a week or so. We were doing all right before she came here with her book club and met him, though.”
“Her kids didn’t worry about you draining her bank accounts?”
“Some. But I’m an original investment kind of guy, well-off myself and easy on the upkeep. The will leaves most of Daddy’s fortune to them. Serial shopping and plastic surgery, April’s pastimes until now, are expensive hobbies, but didn’t scare them. The cost to keep her and the gigolo going indefinitely at this Sunset Boulevard place does.”
“Aren’t they a tad money-hungry?”
Ronnie shrugged. “My kids are the same way. April and I had to set up a pre-nup just to date to keep both sides of the family happy. Frankly, I’m curious to see what April’s got herself into. I might look into a Bond girl myself.”
“Sorry, Ronnie. Even the earliest Bond films were in color. The CinSim process relies on the silver nitrite used in vintage black-and-white film stock. You’ll have to go back to an early fifties hottie to find a girlfriend.”
He stared into the distance, trying to imagine a lust-worthy 1950s starlet. I smiled to myself. The greedy next generation might be losing out on its inheritances on both sides of the blended family.
“Is that a Hard Rock Café sign?” Mike caroled happily from the back seat as we tooled down the crowded Strip traffic lanes. “We going there?”
“Near there,” I corrected, pulling Dolly and her chrome bumper bullets into a driveway and up close and personal to a nondescript building upholding major neon.
“‘Star Bar,’” Ronnie snorted, eying the neon sign of exploding stars above the front door. “Looks like Liberace’s strip club.”
“Who’s Liberace?” Steve asked, “some wrestler?”
Come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea for an act in the New Las Vegas.
THE FAMILY ROBERTSON, SANS April, stood stupefied inside the Star Bar’s padded leather main door.
A roomful of black-and-white CinSim star power interlarded with hairy-legged, Bermuda-shorts-clad tourists in gaudy living color was a mind-blowing sight.
Tourists liked their CinSim dates glamorous, so most of the film-star men and women wore evening dress, and costume diamonds sparkled like the real thing everywhere.
Beefcake and cheesecake was on the menu too. I recognized Marlon Brando’s brutal Stanley Kowalski from the 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire and Marilyn Monroe in a revealing sheath dress from one of her 1950s sex comedies.
I noticed the three guys in our party eyeballing MM. And Godfrey was too! Sorry, fellas, Miss Monroe’s film future would b
e in living color. Meanwhile, Christa was gawking back and forth between “Nick” and his fellow CinSims.
“Us tourists sure look like slobs in this crowd,” Ronnie noted. “Can you like, rent one of these classy dames? And how can you tell if she’s a platinum blonde or her hair has just gone white?”
“Please,” Godfrey said. “A gentleman would not even ask.”
“These stars are all guaranteed to be in their prime,” I said, sounding like a madam to myself. “Not too many Great Depression-set film characters are in demand. Nor Ma and Pa Kettle.”
“So April had her pick.” Ronnie looked around, nodding. “You get used to the pale and hungry look. I can see the point. Do they do, um, have full physical functions?”
All eyes in our party turned to Godfrey.
“CinSims can duplicate any human function,” he said far too primly for Nick Charles. “It depends on what the leaser requires. My master, for instance, eliminated eating and drinking functions because it would impinge on my time.”
“Nick Charles wouldn’t drink?” Ronnie asked. “I’ve seen the old films on TV and you packed away plenty of gin, Bud.”
“Ah...” Godfrey had forgotten he was playing the role of his wilder, wetter cousin, Nicky, and this wasn’t the Prohibition era anymore. “Drinking is allowed, yes. For effect. Nothing serious. Ah, shouldn’t we be visiting the happy couple that’s made everyone so unhappy?”
“We’re expected for brunch with mother and gigolo tomorrow,” Christa said, turning away. “I wanted to know what to expect. I’ve seen enough here.”
MIDMORNING FOUND US ALL loaded in Dolly en route to the Sunset Boulevard Estates, my real reason for staying on this case. I’d been indecently eager to eyeball the exclusive gated virtual community and the Pissed Family Robertson was my ticket in.
Once the scrolled iron gates parted at Christa’s intercom message to the house, we taxied past pastel-stucco villas that were excessively similar: stone exteriors and pillared archways, with dark green Hollywood twist pines flanking broad front doors.
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